“I’m nervous,” Ballmer said at the outset of the talk, which he noted was his first one since leaving Microsoft in February. “It may be my last, too, if it doesn’t go well.”

In the presentation, he talked about Microsoft and Apple as being two-trick ponies.

“They’re an amazing company because they did two tricks,” Ballmer said of Apple, according to GeekWire. “We’re an amazing company because we did two tricks.”

Apple’s tricks, according to Ballmer, were the Mac and low-power touch computing, starting with the iPod. Microsoft’s, by his calculation, were the personal computer and then getting that technology adopted by businesses.

Microsoft’s third trick, though, has proven to be, well, tricky.

“We’ve done two tricks and those will go for a lot of years,” he said. “But in our industry, you have to do a third trick.”

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